Have you ever wondered how computers got started and where programming languages came from?

In the beginning, Charles Babbage’s difference engine could only be made to execute tasks by changing the gears which executed the calculations. Thus, the earliest form of a computer language was physical motion. Eventually, physical motion was replaced by electrical signals when the US Government built the ENIAC in 1942. It followed many of the same principles of Babbage’s engine and hence, could only be “programmed” by presetting switches and rewiring the entire system for each new “program” or calculation. This process proved to be very tedious. (Photos)

That changed in 1955 and through the 60s with the advent of Fortran, good for scientific calculations, and then Cobol for commercial data processing. These languages gave early programmers their first glimpse of the expressive power of abstracting away underlying details and using higher-level constructs to describe their needs.

In the mid 1990′s in Japan, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto created the programming language Ruby. Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language. Matsumoto has stated, “I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language.”

NOTE: It’s never too late to learn computer programming. Find out more at DaVinci Coders.